


Grit And Gristle In Your Feathers

by dogtit



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, aka the au where angies a junker too, medihawk au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-19 23:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogtit/pseuds/dogtit
Summary: Mako had held Angela up in his arms, ignored her screaming and shrieking and begging and kicking to get her out of the fire. The smoke burned his lungs; her tears seared through his skin. His dad had to be dead; his dad wouldn’t have let the war reach Australia if he’d still been alive.Or, the AU where Mercy's a Junker.





	Grit And Gristle In Your Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> i would die on a hill for mako+angie sibling friendship, fight me,

When Mako was seventeen, homeless, parentless, and alone, he had gone to the doctors. Or, well, he’d been forced into it by countless, concerned mates who were pissing themselves every time he coughed and it sounded a little too wet, shook his body a little too hard, left him breathless a little too long.

The radiologist–a German woman with long brown hair, sharp blue eyes, and a pinched mouth–took one look at the scans of his chest, her pinched mouth puckering even tighter, and told him that one of his lungs was almost set to collapse.

Pneumothorax got tossed around a lot, not that baby faced Mako knew shit about it. There was no one to teach him that kind of jargon; his mum had died five years earlier, pneumonia, and his dad was off on the front lines of the war. It was almost over, had been since that Overwatch thing had started up in full, but ‘till the tin cans were all shut up and shut down, the war was still raging.

So what if his dad hadn’t talked to him in years? So what if military tours weren’t meant to last  _this bloody long._  His pa was off fighting the good fight, and Mako was left to try and get it together. And he could. Pneumothorax or not.

Only, the doc hadn’t liked that answer, and soon he’d been scheduled for a surgery, for treatment. “My husband,” the radiologist told him, “has the steadiest hands you could want for a surgeon. You’re safe, Mako.”

Turned out, he was. His surgeon was Swiss, blonde hair and brown eyed with the kind of kind smile that could put a rabid pittie at ease. Mako went under Dr. Ziegler’s knife and woke up sore but breathing finer than he had in over two years. There was no one in his room save a six year old little girl with Ziegler’s blonde hair, but his wife’s sharp, smart eyes.

“Don’t tell mom,” she said when she saw his eyes open, “I’m not supposed to be here.”

He grunted.  _Then why are you?_  Talking was hard with his dry mouth, the lethargy dragging at his limbs still.

“I’m gonna be a doctor like my daddy one day, so I gotta get used to the gross stuff.” 

Seemed fair, and Mako was no snitch, so when Ziegler wandered ‘round to ask how he was doing he didn’t mention the little girl smuggled beneath his hospital bed, muffling giggles in her hands. ‘Sides. She kept things interesting, and drew him all kinds of weird shit–she’d been copying pictures out of anatomy textbooks and drawing it out in a six year old’s hand. It was pretty metal.

Even after his stitches had sealed up, and he’d been released free and breathing clear and hard, he kept in touch. Angela was nice to him. Her folks ended up taking him in when she’d told them about how he was couch surfing, drifting, waiting for a call from his pops; they gave him the guest room by Angela’s, and she was thrilled when he showed her the little folder full of her drawings that he’d kept around.

The war reached them in one last, horrible explosion of malice the week before Angela’s seventh birthday. Bombed downtown. Bombed uptown. Bombed the hospital her parents worked at. Practically burned the whole fucking country down.

Mako had held Angela up in his arms, ignored her screaming and shrieking and begging and kicking to get her out of the fire. The smoke burned his lungs; her tears seared through his skin. His dad had to be dead; his dad wouldn’t have let the war reach Australia if he’d still been alive.

Things got worse, after that, for him and Angie. He was twenty and carved out what living he could with solar farms, working on them and maintaining them; Angela took to reading and medicine and chemistry, reading and reading. When he got hurt, he let Angie practice healing on him, remembered how safe he’d felt under Dr. Ziegler’s knife just three years ago, and told her so.

They lived, somehow. If anyone asked, she was his sister. If anyone stirred shit, he was her brother. He earned their keep on the farm, and even as the space got a little tighter with him hitting growth spurts, putting on muscle and fat like a tank. Angie proved herself invaluable as she soaked up mediknowhow like a sponge, even as the shit stirred tighter as she grew into a woman’s body.

(He taught her how to shoot. She hated it, he could tell, but times were different, times were scarce, and even healers had to know how to kill.)

When he was thirty, Angie a spry 19 and a certifiable fucking genius, he thought about contacting Overwatch.  _Got a doctor for you_ , he’d tell them.  _She’s smart as hell, saw her stitch up fifteen people after a solar panel broke and almost killed the lot of us. She could do so much with you._

But Mako was selfish, he’d be the first to admit it, and he didn’t quite know what he’d do without that stubborn as hell Swiss slapping his head with a stick and telling him to eat healthier, go to sleep sooner.

Then the government backstabbed the lot of them. Gave those fucking robots  _their_  land, pushed them off  _their own_  ruined country, into the Outback and well. Mako had had  _enough_. He was tired of doing his own shit, minding his own business; the Omnics had taken it all already, so why did they get even more shit they didn’t own? Didn’t add up to him.

Angie didn’t agree with him. They had more than one spat over their opinions on Omnics–Angela just wanted to help them recover, wanted to help them  _all_  forget about war and death–and Mako wanted justice. They agreed to disagree, up until five years later when the Liberation had…made everything ten times worse.

Mako fled. Mako made his mask and his chopper and Angela, his world, his family, the stubborn little girl who’d drawn him pictures of guts and gore and who has sewn him up and made him feel as safe as her dad once had, came with him with a bag full of equipment and fire in her eyes.

–

“He really went and got his ass locked up by the  _queen?!_ “ Medihawk hissed to him, furiously. “What the fuck did he  _do_ , Hog?!” 

“Blew up her summer shack,” Roadhog grumbled. They huddled together behind a shelter of scrap metal and stone. Armed guards were ready to rip them apart if they made the wrong move. Which they would have to do, if they were going to get Rat out of trouble.  _Again_. 

“Fuck,” said Medihawk. Roadhog agreed with a grunt. He leaned just enough to see his options. There was a door he could probably bust down, but he’d be shot at from all sides, and it was straight across open space. 

Fucking Jamison. Getting them into this shit.

“Got an idea,” Roadhog said. “Gonna just run at the door, get in, get Junkrat out. He’s probably got bombs up his ass to help. Wouldn’t put it past him.” 

“I told him to stop that!” Medihawk spat. 

“You know how he is.” Roadhog rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck. “You with me?” 

Medihawk grabbed one of the ports of his mask used to connect to the biotic gas canisters she made for him, using it to yank his head around and back to her level.

“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in. On one condition; we try diplomacy first.”

“Angela,” he growled in warning, and she just shook him a little and snarled back, “ _Mako._ ” 

They glared at each other until he relented with an aggrieved sigh. Medihawk released him, then with a breath, stood up with both arms raised in the air.

“ _DON’T SHOOT, DICKHEADS,_ ” she shrieked. The answer came in the audible sound of multiple guns being cocked.

Roadhog snagged her by the seat of her leather pants and yanked her back down under cover, just as bullet hailed down on them. Roadhog snorted as one nicked the exposed flesh of his upper arm, enough to leave a burning sting and draw a line of red, aggravated and burned skin.

“So much for diplomacy,” he drawled.

Medihawk, loading rounds into the automatic sawed off shotgun, shook her head. “Shame,” she said, finishing with her ammo and plugging in more biotic technology on the underside to fill him full of lifesaving nanodrugshit that would have made her a fortune if she hadn’t been a Junker. “Real pity. Can’t say I didn’t give it a try.”

She cocked the gun, the metal plague doctor’s mask fitting over her face as her wings unfolded behind her.

“We’re probably never getting back here,” Medihawk asked him, her voice tinny, muffled, and yet still clear. “Are we?”

“Probably not,” Roadhog agreed. “That bother you?”

“My home’s always been with you. So saying goodbye to this shitheap? Not a real problem.” Medihawk rolled her shoulders. “Now lets get this over with.”


End file.
